Longtime restaurateur Michael Shine, center, and sons Colin, left, and Chris work together at Frank's. Another son, Whitney Shine, also helps out.

Photo: Gary Fountain, Freelance

Longtime restaurateur Michael Shine, center, and sons Colin, left,...

Image 10 of 14

(For the Chronicle/Gary Fountain, June 6, 2013)
Longtime restaurateur Michael Shine, center, with his two sons, Colin Shine, left, and Chris Shine, at Frank's American Revival restaurant. Michael is the owner of the restaurant, and his sons work with him. Colin is the sous chef, and Chris is general manager/operating partner.

Photo: Gary Fountain, Freelance

(For the Chronicle/Gary Fountain, June 6, 2013)
Longtime...

Image 11 of 14

(For the Chronicle/Gary Fountain, June 6, 2013)
Pictured with selections from their menu are longtime restaurateur Michael Shine, center, and his two sons, Colin Shine, left, and Chris Shine, at Frank's American Revival restaurant. Michael is the owner of the restaurant, and his sons work with him. Colin is the sous chef, and Chris is general manager/operating partner.

One thing new restaurants are not good at: taking things slow. In their zeal to establish themselves, create excitement and drive traffic, new restaurants change their minds on the fly and try to accomplish things overnight.

Michael Shine knew better. When he took over Frank's Chop House on Westheimer last July, he abandoned his plan to change the name and resisted a natural impulse to do a wholesale overhaul of the menu. It might have been one of his smartest moves.

"I discovered very quickly on Night 1 that there was a customer who came here at least once a week," said Shine, who has spent virtually his entire career in the restaurant and food industry. "I didn't foresee the loyalty to Frank's and the loyalty to the menu. There was so much loyalty."

And now the patrons who were loyal to Frank's Chop House (former owner Frank Crapitto, who sold the business to Shine, still owns the nearby Crapitto's Cucina Italiana) are loyal to Frank's Americana Revival, Shine's careful, deliberate rebranding of the popular River Oaks restaurant.

So conscious was Shine about not alienating the Frank's regulars that he would continue to make dishes that he quietly scooted off the menu, including the campechana that one regular absolutely had to have on each of her visits. Shine kept Frank's talented chef, Albert Estrada, kept the understated décor, even kept Crapitto's tradition of selling summer tomatoes from Atkinson Farm.

But as he marks his restaurant's first anniversary on July 1, Shine has clearly made the old Frank's his own Frank's. While keeping some of the former Frank's favorite menu items, Shine, president of Texas Food Group, a restaurant consultancy, has tweaked the entire menu, offering fewer chophouse cuts while expanding the lineup of classic American dishes. The kitchen also is investing in its own signature dishes, including grillades and grits (wine-braised short ribs over jalapeño cheese grits), fettuccine with a beef- and pork-bolstered Sunday gravy, pan-seared Creole snapper with okra and tomato stew, pecan-crusted drum on zucchini and corn macque choux, and a double-bone pork chop with sweet corn mashed potatoes. Blackboard specials really put the American in Frank's Americana: a rich meatloaf and mashers on Sunday, veal liver and onions with bacon on Monday, chicken pot pie on Tuesday and a Friday lunch special of buttermilk fried chicken with smoked gouda macaroni and cheese.

Shine didn't do it alone. He had chip-off-the-old-block assistance in putting a new shine on Frank's: Three of his four sons also work at the restaurant.

Christopher Shine, Shine's oldest son, is the restaurant's general manager. Vice president of Texas Food Group, which he joined in 2005, Christopher also has spent many years in the restaurant industry, most recently with P.F. Chang's as a national service trainer. In addition to managing the restaurant, Christopher built the wine list and is getting his sommelier certification.

Shine's youngest son, Colin, initially joined the team as a bartender before beginning an intense education in the kitchen under Estrada. "I didn't want him to learn the shortcuts to cook. It's easy to cook. But how do you cook well? How do you execute at our volume? How do you get the highest amount of flavor in a dish?" Shine said. "Albert has been a very gracious and patient teacher."

Another Shine son, Whitney, who lives in Austin but resides in Houston during the week working for Occidental Petroleum, comes in several evenings a week to work as a host. "He has an emotional attachment to the family business," Shine said of Whitney's volunteer efforts for Frank's.

So what's it like when as many as four Shines are working under one roof at the same time?

"It's not easy. It's difficult to separate business from personal. As a business owner, though, you have to say what you expect from them," the elder Shine said.

He added, though, that his sons are dear to him as well as the business: "We're better as a team than we are just me."

"It's about trust," Christopher said of working with his family. "You defer to the things they have expertise in, and for the things you know you're right about, you make yourself heard."

Colin, who has a degree in economics from the University of Texas, said he's happy in back-of-the-house operations. What has he learned working for his father? "He's hammered into us to keep your nose to the grindstone," he said. "I'm very blessed and fortunate that someone of his experience has confidence in me. I have a lot to learn."

And he has time to learn. Michael Shine said he's looking at a long run for Frank's. "I want something that's here 20 years, not two or three years," he said.

Christopher added that though he and his father have other restaurant concepts in the hopper, they're intensely focused on Frank's. "What appealed to us about Frank's is the potential for longevity," he said. This restaurant is about being here for a long time and seeing a customer grow with us."